Creative Reflective e-Portfolio #1

Reflective Narrative

Brief Reflection:

ENC 1101 was the first class of my first day of college. I entered with the past experience that English is a hard subject and that my workload would pile on the stresses I already had. On the contrary, I entered a class where we were taught in an engaging way. In this week's reading, I learned that each person has a unique dialect and that it can change depending on what region you live in or who you interact with. Just because someone from a different background or dialect isn't that good at communicating doesn't mean that they are not knowledgeable, rather they may not know or remember the proper words to express themselves, such as not knowing the exact phrase to express a thought. As a student who struggled in my native language like Ema Antochi (from The Two-Toned Journey of a Bilingual), watching the video on the topic provided a sense of comfort and helped me start to worry less about hesitating to let my difficulty in speaking or writing stop me from doing so. I concluded that it's not about perfection, but rather the thoughts and what you want to express that's important.

Reflect on the Revision Process:

Getting feedback from my peer, Ashley Ridgway, was helpful in improving my writing. She mentioned that she liked my writing and found it very informative on the topic and also appreciated that I focused on current issues. However, she pointed out that my text doesn’t discuss identity until the very end and suggested that I also talk about the identities of other people mentioned, such as Trump and Kamala, and how they use their identities too. Initially, I was a bit hesitant about making changes regarding other people's identities, as I believed it might deviate from my main topic about Elon Musk's identity. However considering the feedback, I realized that adding this information may improve my work. Consequently, I added an introduction clarifying how Elon uses his identity and added a few lines about the other people mentioned. From Ashley's suggestions, I believe that readers understood my idea, but they seemed to prefer a more detailed introduction about the topic before diving into the details later on.

Sources:

Antochi, E. [Stylus: A Journal of First-Year Writing]. (2023, January 2). The Two-Toned Journey of a Bilingual [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved August 31, 2024, from https://youtu.be/qbdCwIrslFU?si=W7vNOhTlIf4nSsps